A Quick Trip to the LCS 8.22.13

I stopped by the my LCS for a couple of mystery boxes and found that he had restocked his dollar box with reams of sexy, serial numbered cardboard.   For a measly 9 bucks I nabbed these gems:

That Pujols is #/45, the Ichiro Donruss card is #/100, and the Clark is #/2500.

Clemente is #/1500, Ruth is #/1000, Williams is #/1000.  The Mantle is not serial numbered, but it looks like it should be.

I also picked up two mystery long boxes that were loaded with different treats:

I recently started focusing on Vida Blue cards, so this was appropriately-timed.

That Metal Universe card was one of a stack of 200.  I hold on to all Metal Universe cards, so that was exciting.  I'll show those off in an upcoming Metal Universe post.  They're extremely awesome.

That Nolan Ryan quote cracks me up.

One box contained tons of 2005 Finest.  Got my hopes up because that's one of the very few Griffeys I am missing, but there were none to be found.

There was also a nice cross-section of serial-numbered refractors from the 2005 set.

Young Sandberg, Cora turning one over Will Clark, and a delightfully literal Tim Salmon.

Lots of bubbles

A former LSU Tiger in two uniforms

Just plain silliness

I hope my next mystery box is so kind.  Toodles!

Hey, Look What I Bought: a Trip to the LCS

When I was a kid and I went to the card shop, I was pretty excited to have ten bucks to spend.  I would pick up a couple of packs and maybe a Griffey base card for three bucks, and that would be it.  Now in the days of adult pay checks and credit cards and such, I am able to score hauls that 13-year-old me would have done that awkward adolescent overreaction for.

Case in point: my LCS had a big ol' box of dollar cards, and I went through every one.  Here's what I landed:

 

NINE '89 Donruss rookies.  Didn't think twice about snagging these.

 

A trio of sweaty '89 Fleer rookies.



Leo Durocher got kicked out of 95 games in his career as a manager.  I've never been able to find an affordable Bob Uecker card (in case you live under a rock he's the foul-mouthed, whiskey-swilling commentator for the Indians in the movie Major League).  It cracked me up that there's a white Frank Thomas who also played pro ball, and that is a Willie Mays card for a dollar.  Couldn't pass that up.  Plus that one dude's name is Pie.  That's funny.



 

Here we have two great Frank Thomas rookies, two Piazza rookies, and a Michael Jordan pre-rookie.  New Orleans may be the only place that Will Clark could sell for a dollar.  Also a signed Kent Hrbek rookie, a nickname-signed "Shotgun" Shuba, and a vintage Ruth/Aaron/Mays card from before Hank's breaking fo the HR record.  That last one blew my mind.  I don't actually know the value, but it's got to be more than a dollar, right?

That's it for the dollar cards.  The following are from a ten dollar 800-count mystery long box.  These have produced some great stuff int he past, and overall this one was no different:



These were in cases taped to the front of the box.  They were not a mystery.



There was a ton of 1995 stuff in that box, particularly Stadium Club and Upper Deck (some of my favorite sets).  Plus a Tino rookie I didn't have and a Will Clark cameo on a Joey Cora card.



This is a small selection of the '95 UD cards.  Not bad.....



There was a stack of 50 or so '95 Pinnacle Zenith as well, all of them pretty good cards.



Plus these....



.....and a couple of these playing cards.



This box has been pretty good, but were there Griffeys..........?

You bet your sweet bippy there were Griffeys.

He also had a box of dollar packs that uncluded a bunch of Bowman from the 2000's.  I picked up two packs of Bowman and two of Topps Stars which I had never opened before.


Crazy textures, and all the cards are serial numbered.  These were fun to open.



Yadier Molina rookie from a pack of Bowman.



That was it from my LCS.  I did also find myself on the Westbank this past weekend and ended up stopping at a card shop we spotted in a strip mall.  There wasn't much to be had, but I found these that I needed:



My first successful trip to the WBCS (Westbank Card Shop).



Card shops down here are not at all baseball-oriented, so hauls like this tend to be few and far-between.  I feel like I hit the lottery right now.

Happy Tuesday, everybody......!

COMC and My LCS Win the Wallet Wars Over the Evil Repack Boxes

Last month was the first card show I skipped since I started paying attention to card shows again.  I thought my money better spent on COMC.  Here are the cards I picked up, all for around 30 bucks:





My first Ron Kittle autograph!  This was not the most expensive card I purchased, but it's very cool and has a neat signature.  Check out the stylized R and the oval that dots the i and crosses the t's all at once.

I consider this one of the most interesting cards ever made.  Embarassingly enough, I still wonder how they did it....  Was he holding a blue or green card and they added it later, or is it some early version of Photoshop?  Madding, I'm sure you know, but don't ruin it for me!  I'm enjoying my ignorance.

I've wanted an un-mustachioed Rollie for a long time, and that Hank Aaron is just a beautifully put-together card (1994 Topps had some gems).  Then you've got Steve Lake with his pet cockatoo, Ruffles.  Cockatoos tend to live a long time, up to 70 years, so I wonder if that guy is still alive today.  Plus I don't always collect basketball cards, but when I do, they have rainbows over the Golden Gate Bridge.  Yowza.

That Desert Shield Kittle card is the most expensive card I bought in this whole post.  I am still on the hunt for the Griffeys, but at least I've got that Kittle on lockdown.  The Bowman Kittle card is a Tiffany, and that Staley Bowman card is one of the more disturbing pieces of vintage I've ever seen.

AHHHHHHHH!!!

The rest is a bunch of silly names, pictures, etc.  You know the type.

Hee hee.

I also had to stop into my LCS for 5000-count box I'm using for a secret baseball card-related project that has taken up nearly all my blogging time.  While I was there I snagged a few neat cards just for me.

That Chipper rookie is one of the few I don't already have.  The big Unit '89 UD offcially completes that set for me - very exciting.  The '90 Leaf Frank Thomas RC is one of the great ones of my time, so for a buck I just couldn't pass it up.  The Yaz just kind of spoke to me, as did ol' Gern.  I've been trying to pick up that Yogi on ebay and COMC for cheap, but none doing.  It's one of the most iconic manager cards ever made.  And finally, yes, that is an Aaron Brooks autographed card.  He's kind of a joke in NOLA, so I guess I kind of bought it as a goof.

I feel better when my money goes to cards I already know I love and want to keep as opposed to packs and packs of cards that, while some are cool, just cost too much to gamble on.  That's why I'll keep going back to COMC.  You other bloggers make sure to keep posting new cards for me to drool over, especially if they have names like Stubby Clapp and Urban Shocker.

Did you notice that none of the above cards are Griffeys?  What is happening to me?  Am I becoming a collector again?

Surprises from the Card Shop

Holy crap, New Orleans has a card shop.

We used to have several, the most prolific of which was Frank's with several locations.  Those are all long-gone since Katrina.  I have never seen another until I Googled and discovered Markman on W. Esplanade in Metairie.

I needed some long boxes for my sets, so I decided to go.  There were no dime boxes, sadly, but I cleaned out every Griffey I needed or wanted dups of from his dollar bin and grabbed a couple cheap long boxes filled with mystery cards.

I got these from those boxes: 

I wasn't expecting any Griffeys at all, so this was a nice surprise.  I have, oh, 3,000 of this card, but another couldn't hurt.  And I always loved this "All-Star" banner depicting the night sky.  Man, '91 Topps rules.

OK.  I'll take it.  To quote my uncle, Griffey cards are like pizza and p****, even bad ones are still pretty good.  My uncle is filthy but hilarious.

A guy blowing a bubble - one of my sub-collections.  Score.  And a Ron Kittle!  This is turning out to be a decent enough junk wax box.

Hey, look.  There's a whole bunch of '89 Bowman sitting sideways in this box....

Qapla'!!!!!

My wife even got a little excited for me when I started pulling these out of the box (she knows I'm a Griffey weirdo).

So, yeah.  I want more of those boxes.  I also got a fistful of Will Clark, Steve Carlton, Carlton Fisk, Fergie Jenkins, Nolan Ryan, Rod Carew, Will Clark, Dave Winfield, Ripken, Mattingly, Ozzie (Smith not Canseco), Nolan Ryan, Rollie Fingers, Dale Murphy, and Clark (Will) plus a buttload of early-80's Fleer and Topps.  It was fun to look through and better than any repack box I've bought.

I apologize for the Klingon.  My posts just keep getting nerdier....

Coming next week - Massive 80's Glasses on Guys Named Tom: Hume vs. Henke - Who Wore Them Best?